M I C HAEL S M AL L, W RITER MONDAY, 7 FEBRUARY 2011
CYCLONE CORAL It was the cyclone season, that time of sudden change, even violation, when lives could be lost, or lost and found again. The time when villagers refuse strangers permission to cross their land. It was the time when sorcerers might summon foul weather or cast spells of love. It was the time when hardened trees could be split and uprooted: the burao, from which grass skirts were still made for stubborn grandmothers who refused western underwear and beaded doormen of posh hotels who didn’t; the natangura palm, whose sea-soaked strips of branch were dried as thatch for the roofs of traditional huts or luxurious overwater bungalows; the banyan tree, whose massy roots like distended organ pipes stood firm, as its threads, hanging from stout branches, danced like dervishes; the butterfruit with clusters of avocadoes and green-skinned breadfruits; the wild kava, whose thin, white roots James liked to chew on; the Christmas or flame tree like dragons’ breath. All were shaken by the freshening anger of the winds.
In front of the People’s Providence Fund building, the police were nervously pointing their guns fixed with tear gas canisters at hundreds of angry protesters.
This should not happen, James thought with unaccustomed annoyance and dismay, as he lined up the kayaks and catamarans on the beach near the thatched sun shelters. The chiefs flying into town from the islands. This means trouble. He could understand how the rascals stared at him, with curiosity rather than resentment, as he walked past the slum to the resort every morning on tough, bony feet, conscious of his company shirt gaudy with tropical flowers. You could eat off your own land, but not save, even if you sold your fruit at market. The poor people, the jobless, must be given loans too so they could start their own businesses, instead of getting out of bed at lunch-time, drinking kava till they lose their memory or playing petanque hour
after hour. Take Simeon at Adventure Kayaking in the outer lagoons, paddling the tourists to his tribal island and explaining their customs. Or those two bigfelas who returned from the plantations in Queensland, where their ancestors were blackbirded by sandalwood traders five generations ago. Now they own a squid takeaway in town.
Half a dozen of the hotel guests had taken single kayaks beyond the spit of sand supporting overwater falas and were gliding by the white-porticoed French villas guarded by barking dogs prowling at the edge of the lagoon. He was lying back, resting his arms, drifting at peace, when he heard loud, urgent noises, laughter of maniacal intensity. Don’t leave the grounds of the hotel, James had advised at the sports hut. There will be trouble today. But they had tired of sitting in the lounge being fed with complimentary packs of cards, gateau of the day, free lessons in blackjack at the casino, so that when a TV was wheeled into the bar the least somnolent or most bored told themselves that the management was getting flustered.
Easing himself upright, he realized that the group had paddled beyond the spacious French villas and that the bush to their right had given way to a village behind the mangroves. All too suddenly he found himself caught in a whirl of rapids, dark faces staring at him from a slow-crossing car on the bobbly single-lane bridge, the longhaired woman having skimmed through, foolishly, he thought, but the other four had circled round by the opposite bank, while his own kayak was caught, jostled and lifted through the centre arch and out the other side where the woman was already turning. ‘Great, isn’t it?’ she hoyed, flushed with exhilaration. ‘The others don’t know what they’re missing. They must’ve gone back.’ ‘I feel uneasy!’ he yelled, trying to check his zimming past her with the paddle trailing and as he skewed round there were several men and boys peering down from the bridge. The woman had already failed to negotiate a side arch, but launched herself at the centre arch and rocked into the darkness and through. He steadied his craft, gathered momentum and with gritted desperation paddled as hard as he could towards the centre arch. No sooner had he reached the stonework than his kayak
spun sideways and back down on the fast-flowing current. What sounded like urgent threats, bislama pidgin he assumed, crackled from the bridge and shrieks of witchlike laughter from piccaninnies in the shadow of mangrove shoots whose pods they were collecting for soup. Again and again he attacked each of the three arches with bungling slashes of the paddle and mounting alarm close to panic, beneath the stern faces leaning over the bridge with fierce gesticulations. What their intent was, he had no idea. No longer listening, he splashed over to the bank, took a deep breath, scrambled out and dragged his kayak over a patch of sand up the runners of grass to the road. Where the knot of men were already waiting. ‘Go down there!’ said the tallest of them gruffly, pointing to the steep embankment on the other side of the bridge. ‘Where you from?’ ‘The Voyageur,’ he replied and instantly regretted the French name. ‘Go down!’ But the rocks were razor sharp and slippery as he straddled awkwardly on wet feet. When the prow of the kayak was lowered and struck him on the chest, he knew they were going to pitch him into the water. ‘Wait! I’m going to fall. Just drop the kayak.’ They let go the craft, but it slid beyond his stretching hands, until a boy on a ledge beside him, balancing like a marmoset, had reined it in, turned it about and held on till he’d toppled in, pulling away in brisk but ineffectual snatches upstream to the bank, the French bank he would dub this expat. area, where the woman was still waiting, alone. ‘Are you all right?’ ‘A bit shaken,’ he said, bowed and breathy. ‘I thought they were going to beat me up. Or worse.’ ‘You’re safe now. Stay close to the bank for a bit. I sussed the tension in town this morning. Specially those gangs of young men, the rascals.’
When the protesters finally charged with fists, stones and sticks, the police fired their first round of tear gas. Amid the wild shouting and rage and salvoes through the air, the tear gas billowed back amongst the police, whose presence melted away in the confusion. Women and children mainly, some hysterical, ran the hundred metres back to the esplanade to splash their streaming eyes, but the men, even if blinded and retching, pushed through the none-too-resistant cordon to smash the windows of the People’s Provident Fund and batter down the doors. In the frenzied search for the files of those privileged to be granted loans, they flung furniture out the windows into the road and cut curtains and scattered paperwork, files, books.
He showed her the path behind the maintenance sheds and staff quarters. It wound up a steep slope through a strip of rain forest to the slum community. ‘Who would believe it’s less than ten minutes from our luxury hotel,’ she said. ‘I bet that’s rubbing salt into these poor people’s wounds.’ ‘A-lo’ came to them from among the palms as a two syllable sing-song. ‘Usually, they seem very friendly people,’ he said, rueful after that morning’s scare. ‘Except when their Government betrays them. I hope we don’t look like patronizing colonials.’ ‘A-lo.’ ‘Hello. How are you today?’ Among the banana and mango trees, the mud alleys and bolt holes stretched away into dense foliage and corrugated iron shanties with mud floors and crumbling concrete festooned with lurid washing lines, bamboo cane and palm leaves. Piccaninnies, in gales of laughter, cavorted in puddles, chickens scrabbled for scraps among the rotting green mangoes and seed pods like scabbards. Old men, perhaps too old to rouse trouble in the town, gathered round a game of petanque, flipping the silver balls from under their palm to backspin or knock away the balls of their
opponents. Dogs roamed freely, very watchful of strangers or trailed their owner with sullen obedience. The one or two young men who loitered stared through them. ‘Perhaps we should go back,’ he said. ‘They don’t mean any harm.’ On the outskirts of town, tamtams leaned backwards out of unlikely places, like the backyards of garages. ‘Let’s go back.’
Most businesses in town closed early and boarded up. Tours were cancelled. Radio South Pacific shut down.
The wind was whining down the long, low-ceilinged corridor like wild cats purring through their teeth, suddenly snarling with pain and howling through the night. From his verandah he saw the branches of the coconut palms flapping, filleted to the spine or plumed like bedraggled mops, broken sails hanging limp. The lawns were strewn with the yellow heads of tecoma, their purple petals of purple filaments and gold vulvas the texture of wet latex alongside the upside-down petals of frangipani smudged a faint grey mushroom tone. There was a gentle knock on the door. Evelynne, the Melanesian chambermaid, had come to turn back the covers and prop the bolster in a corner beneath the diamond shield of a wall-lampshade. Graceful was Evelynne, though she favoured her left foot in pinching flat heels, hesitant with easy-grinning deference. ‘The cyclone’s coming,’ she said.
‘Cyclone Coral is approaching in a southerly direction at six to seven knots,’ announced the manager. ‘At its centre, it is blowing at 173 kilometres per hour. This lobby where we are standing is made of concrete. The power cables are underground.
It is the safest building on the island. We have taken the precaution of bringing in extra provisions.’ ‘Is the beer half-price?’ ‘Double,’ the manager replied, amidst some slightly uneasy laughter. ‘But seriously, let me assure you that you are quite safe here. By the way, there is a disturbance in the town. Among the local people. It is in all our interests to stay in the grounds of the hotel. We shall be carrying on with our program of entertainment as normal. I hope to see you all at the shipwreck party tonight.’
The rioters were now strung out along the main street, overturning police vans, looting homes of those borrowers on the list, stealing cars from showrooms, whose wooden boards they bashed with rocks from the terraces. The Director of the People’s Provident Fund was clubbed like a pig in his own home.
His first notion was to go as Leonardo di Caprio, o vanity, but settled – apologetically, until the rum punch warmed his cockles – for Ben Gunn: fluttery, lispy, fuddy-duddery, a powder-monkey turned monkey-spider, in rags borrowed from the kiddies club dressing-up box, his face streaked with a smidgin of barbecue ash and Elegance body lotion. She, Captain Flint, her winking face cherubic with hair bunched under his straw akubra slanted athwart; a crimson silk kerchief at her blouson of speedwell blue, white slacks buckled and turned up below-knees, as hale a tar as ever strutted the poop, whose unflinching rapier thrust would prod you across that plank quick smart. He found his windows shuttered with thick, wooden battens. The gecko that cohabited at evenings was hyper-active on its floor-to-ceiling circuit. Small ants were seeking refuge in the cross-hatching of wicker chairs. Only the giant snails seemed undeterred, gliding along dangerous stamping grounds to luxuriant grazing, their shells extravagant in their beige-to-cream whirls of shiny smoothness; Belgian escargot chocolates.
‘I owe you an apology.’ She breezed to his table as he was breaking his croissant, the hanging frames of coloured photographs of toothy-smiling island children clattering against the walls of the bar verandah. ‘About last night.’ ‘Think nothing of it. Are you okay?’ ‘Thank you, yes. You see . . . It was the miscarriage,’ she blurted, her eyes already moist. ‘I’m still getting over it.’ ‘I’m sorry . . . I . . .’ He was staring at one of the tall beach umbrella stands shrouded like Egyptian mummies and pushed into a corner indoors. ‘No, no . . . that coffee smells good.’ ‘Here, it’s strong, piping hot, French, just what the doctor ordered.’ ‘That reminds me. My baby aspirin.’ ‘Have you got a headache?’ ‘No,’ she said. ‘My heart is at risk.’ ‘But you’re always jogging and walking and swimming, you positively radiate vitality.’ ‘Thank you, but not so long ago things were very different. We’d been trying for years to have a child. I sank into such a black funk . . . ‘ She was biting her bottom lip, either to hold back tears or the indiscretion or the welling of anger. ‘Hence, these scars.’ A flick of her left wrist revealed thick but faint, mauvy-blue bands beneath a bangle of silver. ‘You poor thing . . .’ He took the fragility of her hand in his finger-tips and traced with delicacy the confluence of scars and bruised veins as might a blind man. It was the first time since they had been thrown together at a table for two that she had given anything of herself. ‘I’m a private person,’ she had said, in that prim, buttoned-up, matter-of-fact voice, clasping her hands on the table cloth as if to
measure some space, however small. He imagined her in a smart black suit, a manager of some distinction. With understated, possibly stubborn firmness. Like a tamtam, he thought, the dark, wooden statue, elongated head more like, hard features unrelenting. ‘How I loathed myself,’ she said, her voice trailing away, lost amid the agitation of the potted palms. He lifted her scarred wrist to his mouth and brushed the anger with his lips.
‘It’s not safe to go out,’ James had warned them. ‘The cyclone is coming. The bed of the lagoon is disturbed. If you tread on a stingray, its tail will swish and cut like a knife blade.’ But the Australian woman had laughed in his face. James could barely look her in the eye, at first, this woman who could sail a catamaran over choppy waves, while her friend, her bigman, lay spread across the canvas in his life-jacket, like a chicken trussed up for market. On my island they would take her to the top of a hill and behead her, he thought, or she would be raped at night by evil spirits, waking up next morning outside her hut, confused about what had violated her but sore and cut and pained in the head. Bone magic is stronger than the white man’s good news. But even when he roared out into the lagoon in the motor boat to check their position in the whitecaps, she would tack, nimbly change sides and call back, ‘We’re fine! We’re okay! It’s lovely!’ the rain slanting into her smiling, upturned face, eyes narrowed against the glare, as she sniffed for winds approaching gale-force as coolly as James himself shinned up a coconut tree.
He sips her words like drops of water and licks the salt from her lips. They had discovered an out-off-the-way pool behind some low-lying rocks, a pellucid green, where the fine white sand shifted every which way with each gust of wind and the motley shells of minute hermit crabs scuttled over stones on wobbly legs. She swam a few metres, bubbled air through her nose, deftly removed her one-piece bathers under water and in a curve of white cheeks dived down to run her fingers over the orange-spotted, smooth-rubbered starfish twice the size of her splayed hand. ‘I feel so free, so alive,’ she burbled, whippy as the dugong of his imagination, flicking
a fan of water at his dismay with the heel of her hand and flipped on to her back., her nipples bobbing like small, pointy corks. ‘I would like to be cast away for ever.’ ‘I would cast you in,’ he found himself saying, surprised at his own recklessness. ‘Am I too fat?’ she said abruptly, patting her stomach, as she gingerly hobbled over the stones to the sand. ‘No, of course not. You’re fine.’ Who was he to judge, with hint of a paunch, spindly, white limbs, hammerhead toes . . . ? ‘But you do have a cheeky coccyx,’ and he made a playful grab for the towel ravelled about her loins. ‘And thereby hangs a tale.’ Surprised again, he heard her little-girl laugh, a shrill arpeggio of nervous giggles.
The President declared a two-week state of emergency on Radio South Pacific. Loans would be made available for the people, he said. The People’s Provident Fund would be replaced and moneys would be disbursed to the shareholders.
He had snipped a hibiscus flower from the terraced garden and positioned it above her ear, its bold orange teasing out the tawny hues of her shoulder-length hair. ‘I like your gentleness,’ she said, ‘your thoughtfulness. That’s the strength of your maleness. And I’m delighted you don’t play golf,’ she added mischievously, as she tucked into the top of his shorts a sprig of bougainvillea of startling indigo. ‘And I like your fearless feistiness,’ he said, ‘and your devil-may-care impulsiveness,’ though he would fear for both of them when she stole from his room at midnight through wide-eyed reception and whispered rumours of grumbling volcanoes. ‘You are a very sensuous lady.’ ‘My husband, he can barely touch me. Not after I’d lost a fourth baby. I didn’t tell you. There wasn’t just the one miscarriage. There were three. And one still-born. We didn’t know why. Stephen could never accept that the humiliation might lie in his family’s genes. Of course, he would never blame me. Not openly. Not to my face. But
his black, silent moods spoke volumes. I could never reach him after that. We couldn’t even look at each other undressing for bed. Then he refused to come to counselling with me. How could an air traffic controller, who calculated the destinies of others, bring himself to accept his wife’s deviation from the plan, the schedule? His eyes pierce the clouds, but he sees nothing. So . . .’ she smiled feebly, ‘his flightpath is the golf course, where handicaps can always be improved.’ They were descending the steps leading to the main street. Tension in town had dissipated in the brew of southerly winds, but buildings remained battened down beneath sudden squalls and skies darkening to lead. Even so, the covered market retained its colour and customary sedateness, overseen by women in bright, floral Mother Hubbard dresses, chatting at rows of orderly tables bedecked with palm leaves and cross-woven pandanus baskets of taro, yams and kumara; pawpaws, breadfruit and bananas sweet, finger and Fijian; bracelets, shells, flowers; and coconuts piled high like cannonballs. ‘Oh look at the poor crabs!’ he exclaimed, pointing out the scaffolding of mud crabs on the ground, shells, pincers, feelers barely twitching, pairs of small, black beads staring through the tangle. ‘It’s better that the locals eat crabs than tear one another apart,’ she said. ‘If only they would put these creatures out of their misery instead of letting them chew at each other.’ ‘Sometimes I used to feel like a dead crab,’ she said. ‘All shell and no meat. No heart even.’ ‘Then let me fold you in my tentacles and make your juices run.’
When the cyclone struck, they were already rocking in each other’s arms, his scent of coconut oil and hers of gin, in sweet perspiration. As the elements boiled overhead, she lashed him to the wheel. Sticky-thighed, tacky-tummed, moans breaking over him stretched to shuddering with the salt of him, steadfast, her shudders and deeper groans and caught-in-the-throat gasps as she cradled, crimped with her thighs.
‘You do like my body, don’t you?’ she whispered. ‘Yes, of course,’ he said, for her thighs were as smooth as stonework bronzed by the sun and her rhythms were the ripples from the calm centre of a coral lagoon towards the surf pounding beyond the reef, as he trolled down the winding path by the cascades dancing their liquid music through the gardens of fruit trees and root vegetables thick with luminous green grasses tall as spears . . . ‘Where are we?’ she sighed. Spills of moisture lay between their breasts and about their navels. He wondered too, unspent by the strangely serene glide and buck, serene beyond content in lagoons uncharted. Her other-worldly voice drifted and faintly echoed. ‘I feel you’ve entered my soul.’ Bereft of air beneath the drumming of rain, the seething of winds and the weight of her words, he sensed that his ego might have drowned.
Seventy-three rioters were arrested by the police. The Director of the People’s Provident Fund was still recuperating in hospital. Cyclone Coral headed south-west towards Townsville.
She was packing. In her high-vaulted lounge of polished timbers and poles of coconut wood, she remembered two huge black spiders in giant spangles of web on opposite sides of the rainforest track. How he had jumped at first, shrunk in on himself and sidled by, but that she had made a closer inspection and cried with delight at the spiders’ golden joints, and how he’d come running back and relaxed into a gaze of admiration and swept her up in his arms and said, ‘You’re so bloody affirming.’
He was standing in the deserted swimming pool, shivering in the rain, staring over the rim across the lagoon towards her overwater fala with its hedgehog-grey thatch.
Her words of finality he was struggling to repeat: ‘The tests eventually showed I have cardiac lupus. A fairly rare disease. My blood is liable to clot at any time. I honour myself by finding some little pleasure each day. Do not be sad. Remember when we snorkelled over the coral and held hands underwater and were blessed by a host of luminous blue angels.’
‘She has left, sir,’ said James, raking the tecoma leaves from the surface of the pool. ‘A cheeky woman, that one. Like the Indian mynah pecking at the head of a tamtam. It’s a timeless, old garden. I too have been there. Four shells of kava might fix you.’
Michael Small January 5-11, 1998 P O S T E D B Y MICH A EL A T 02:56 EMAIL THISBLOGTHIS!SHARE TO TWITTERSHARE TO FACEBOOK
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SNUFFLING FOR BLACK GOLD
THE SCORN OF BECKY PILBEAM
THE WAY OF THE WARRIOR
WHERE THERE’S A WILL
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BRIEFED FOR BERLIN
ROAD TO KAROL BAGH
CYCLONE CORAL
A BITTER SPACE
BEYOND THE GIRRAHWEEN STEPS
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